The present invention relates to a data file apparatus which can register and retrieve data easily regardless of the number of registered files.
Recently, image filing devices have appeared as a fourth office automation (OA) device following word processors, personal computers, and facsimiles and have received much attention as a means for promoting paperless processing in office work and design.
An image filing device stores image information using an optical disk and it can be read and printed immediately whenever necessary.
Therefore, image filing devices are widely spread into fields where particularly a large amount of documents are generated, and high efficiency in retrieval for fetching a desired document from stored documents is one of the important problems concerned with image filing devices.
Therefore, to realize effective retrieval, a method using keywords is widely used. In the method, to register image data, a word indicating the content of the image is added as a keyword. To retrieve the data, the same keyword is input from the keyboard so as to find the desired image. As a method for assigning the keyword, a method for assigning important words and phrases representing concepts of images is generally used. For example, keywords of machine drawings are a product name, drawing number, revision, and designer name.
However, the method using keywords are troublesome because it is necessary to input keywords from the keyboard. For example, to input five keywords 10 characters long, it is necessary to touch more than 100 keys. Retrieval also requires troublesome keyword input.
Therefore, this large amount of work, that is, operational inefficiency is one of causes of disturbing wide use of image filing devices.
An art for eliminating such defects is indicated, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1-232769. According to this prior art, a plurality of heading images are displayed on the screen instead of keywords to be registered and the labor of inputting keywords is saved. Namely, heading images indicating document types are prepared beforehand and displayed on the display when an image file is registered. The heading image corresponding to the image file to be registered is designated by a mouse. By doing this, the heading image is registered in place of the keyword.
As mentioned above, the heading image can be registered only by designating it by the mouse in place of inputting the keyword from the keyboard and there is no need to input a keyword from the keyboard every time for registration. For retrieval, by displaying a plurality of heading images in the same way and designating the heading image corresponding to the desired image file by the mouse, the desired image can be read from the optical disk. Such a retrieval method of list display selection is effective in reducing the psychological burden of an operator compared with the keyword input method.
However, according to the above prior art, as the number of stored images of image data increases, the list display extends across a plurality of screens. As a result, a problem that the display processing for retrieval requires a lot of time is imposed. For example, when 20 heading images are displayed on one screen, up to 20 documents can be registered and retrieved easily, though 40 documents require a double time.
Therefore, there is a problem imposed that as the number of images to be registered increases, it is necessary to turn several display screens and the resulting operation is troublesome. Although an optical disk which is used as a storage medium can store 20,000 to 200,000 images, there is a problem imposed that as the number of images for storing image data increases, the retrieval becomes difficult and finally actual retrieval becomes impossible.